Six Cloud-Based Cybersecurity Threats to Prepare for in 2019

Oct 01 2018

Cybersecurity needs to constantly evolve to stay ahead of the new attack vectors and techniques that hackers and other bad actors use to steal your business data. We’ve looked at how data attacks are changing and identified the biggest threats and risks to your data security.

Poor Access Management and Authentication

Single-factor authentication, a lack of role-based access, and loose credentials all create gaps in your cloud security. Protect your business by introducing strong multifactor authentication like biometrics, supported by smart sign in algorithms that identify unusual behaviors. Couple this with a data audit that informs your role-based access, so that only properly-credentialed users have access to sensitive data.

Lack of Vulnerability Identification and Early Patching of Cloud Services

Although cloud providers will identify and patch any endemic issues in overall cloud-based infrastructure, the complexity of each client’s cloud ecosystem means that there will inevitably be vulnerabilities. Protect your business by regularly using vulnerability assessment and scanning tools, and combine this with penetration testing to find and patch flaws.

Social Engineering, Phishing, and Account Hijacking

The human element is often the weakest link in your cybersecurity chain. Targeted phishing attacks can often obtain account credentials that can lead to unauthorized access. Protect your business through training your employees and requiring multifactor authentication so that even if a hacker gets a login and password, they still won’t be able to access your cloud services and data.

Data Loss and Damaged Business Continuity

Not every data threat comes from hackers and criminals. You can lose vital business data through natural disasters, hardware failures, or dozens of other issues that are outside your control. Protect your business by having an effective data backup and recovery plan. Many cloud providers offer disaster recovery and data copying as an add-on service, which should be considered essential by most enterprises.

Lack of Control of the Cloud Environment

The speed, efficiency, and costs of some cloud environments can be inadvertently impacted by your employees. Without a proper understanding of all your cloud infrastructure and instances, and proper administration controls, employees can easily spin up new instances, use resources, and increase your cloud costs. Protect your business by getting rigorous access controls in place that define what is needed to create, change, and decommission services in your cloud infrastructure.

None of these cybersecurity issues are insurmountable. By knowing about potential cloud service threats ahead of time, you can take action now to stop them becoming a major problem in future.